> Are there any thoughts on the possibility of adding password or passphrase
> style authentication capability to CIPE? i.e. we do not assume that both
> CIPE end-points can be trusted. An example scenario: one end-point is a
> notebook (with a CIPE key) that has been stolen.
It is possible to do this with PKCIPE in a way similar to SSH:
encrypt the secret keys and require a password to access them. OpenSSL
already has the hooks for it. In fact, it is possible _now_
using something like
openssl rsa -des3 -in identity.priv.orig -out identity.priv
pkcipe then asks for the passphrase whenever it runs.
A small bug-fix is currently required to make this work: add
OpenSSL_add_all_algorithms();
just after the umask(077); in pkcipe/main.c.
I'm going to document that possibility and build it into rsa-keygen.
Others have commented that this is of limited use because if the
machine is compromised, so is a secret key stored or processes there
_if it is not encrypted by a key which is not stored_. But if pkcipe,
like ssh, requires the user to enter a passphrase which decrypts the
secret key every time he wants to connect, this really helps in the
above scenario. The thief can do with the machine what he wants, he
won't be able to get the secret key.
Olaf